Acarajé Recipe: a delicious labour of love

This how the pros do it – the acarajé of Nega Teresa.

I think it’s fair to say that not everyone loves Brazilian cuisine. Accusations/complaints I hear from time to time include that it is heavy, overly rich and boring. I’m not going to tell you Brazilian food is light and zingy in the way we think of Thai or Peruvian cuisine, but if you take the time to get beyond the obvious stalwarts like feijoada and the churrascaria meat orgies then things get a lot more interesting and, potentially, lighter too. Most dishes can be given a lighter touch with a few tweaks and recently I’ve been playing around with one of Brazil’s most tasty (and interesting!) dishes.

Eating acarajé is like taking a delicious bite out of Brazil’s past. When I first started learning about Brazilian cuisine one of the things I found most fascinating was the clear links back to West Africa that were still very evident. Acarajé was brought to Brazil by the slaves taken from Ghana and Nigeria – I’m told you can buy Akara (as it is known there) on the streets of Lagos to this very day.

For those unfamiliar, acarajés are fritters made from black-eyed beans – the finished item (somewhat reminiscent of a falafel) is split open and filled with dried shrimp, a nutty, shrimpy paste called vatapá, an okra based mix called carurú, a dab of hot sauce and, optionally, a salsa-like mix of tomatoes, cucumber and coriander/cilantro. They come from Bahia, Brazil’s heartland of Afro-Brazilian culture, and are traditionally sold by baianas, the hugely photogenic women dressed in the traditional garb of of the state (vestuário).

At first sight, making acarajé seems like so much work that it’s one of those things best left to others (see also: puff pastry). But the nice thing about doing it yourself is that you get to tweak the recipe, play around with the flavours and generally make it just the way like (and most likely annoy the hell out of the purists). There’s only one hassly step but once that’s out of the way it’s a really enjoyable dish to prepare:

Recipe: Acarajé do Tom

I’m giving this a “do Tom” suffix in the hope of staving off complaints such as “this isn’t real acarajé”; newsflash people: there are hundreds of variations of most recipes and if you don’t like my modifications then feel free to stick to the stuff being sold on the streets (which I also love!).

Ingredients

1kg black-eye beans

2 tsp salt

1 large onion, chopped

Steps

• Wash the beans and then soak them in plenty of water overnight.
• Now comes the tedious part – you need to remove the skin and the black ‘eye’ from every single bean. I’m told that leaving the skins and eyes in results in an unpleasant bitterness in the end product. I’m not going to lie to you here, it takes ages. I found the best method is to have the beans in a big bowl with plenty of water over the sink. Crush the beans between your fingers, rub large handfuls of them together between your palms, don’t be shy: you’re trying to break the beans apart so that the skins come away. Every so often give the water and beans a good swirl and then quickly pour off the water. A whole load of the skins and eyes will be carried away with the water.

• Repeat the previous step ad infinitum. Eventually all the skins and black specks will be gone and you’ll be left with nothing but the ivory bean centres. This takes at least an hour so put something nice on the radio and settle in – the end results are worth it! [Rio residents: I’ve seen ‘farinha de acarajé’ in Casas Pedro – I haven’t tried it myself but it could be a quick cheat if you don’t have the time or desire to do it the hard way].

The acarajé holy grail – not a skin or an eye in sight.

• When your beans are pure white put them in a food processor/blender with the salt, chopped onion and splash of water. Blend until everything is well combined and the mixture has the consistency of hummus (you may need to add more water for it to blend properly).
• Rejoice – the hard work is over and the mixture can now be split into convenient portions, bagged up, labelled and frozen.

When you are ready to continue you have a number of options: you can do it the traditional way and deep fry the bean purée in dendê (unrefined palm oil); you can deep fry in a mix of dendê and sunflower (etc) oil; or you can tear up the rule book and shallow fry. Palm oil is a very West African ingredient (though interestingly I’ve read that in Nigeria akara are fried in a more neutral vegetable oil). It’s not the healthiest oil in the world but once in a while won’t kill you and the flavour is essential. Personally I like to use a mix of palm and sunflower oil to lighten things up a little.

The deep-fry method

• Put your desired oil(s) in a pan suitable for deep frying and heat it to 170°C (340°F).
• Take portions of the bean mixture and and drop them into the hot oil. You can get all fancy here and make quenelles or go for something more rustic. I find that the acarajés that are sold on the street are a bit on the big side so I just use a tablespoon.

That one at the back needs to be persuaded to roll over.

• Don’t crowd them – I find 2 or 3 at once is the maximum when using a small pan. They float on the surface with the underside getting cooked so after a minute or two give them a nudge to spin them over. When they’re a rich golden colour all over take them out of the oil with a slotted spoon and drain them on absorbent paper.

Don’t you just love the word ‘quenelle’? These are quite a bit smaller than the standard ones you’ll get from street vendors.

The shall-fry method

I guess they’re not really acarajés if you’re shallow frying them but whatever you want to call them they’re still delicious and a lot lighter.

• Put a good layer of oil in pan and heat on medium-high (I still like to use a blend of dendê and sunflower to give it some flavour).
• Put spoonfuls of the bean mixture into the pan and gently flatten and shape them while they’re still malleable.

Can these still be called acarajés? Maybe not, but they’re still tasty!

• Flip the fritters over after a few minutes and give them a light sprinkle of salt. Drain them on absorbent paper once they’re golden on both sides.

OK, now you’ve got your acarajés – but regardless of whether they’re the traditional shape or flattened you’ll want to add some extras. I’ll be straight with you – I’m not a huge fan of okra and so I don’t bother with carurú. However, I love vatapá – here’s my recipe:

Recipe: Vatapá do Tom

Vatapá is a rich, complex mixture of nuts, dried shrimp, herbs, coconut and more. You really do need to use dried shrimp rather than fresh ones – if you don’t have an Asian supermarket nearby then you can buy them on-line. Just make sure you’re getting the ones for human consumption rather than the stuff for feeding turtles!

Ingredients

200g (1cup) dried shrimp

75g (1/3 cup) peanuts (ideally unsalted)

75g (1/3 cup) cashews (ideally unsalted)

900ml (1 quart) coconut milk

150g (2/3 cup) breadcrumbs

A bunch of parsley, roughly chopped

A bunch of fresh coriander (cilantro), roughly chopped

4 spring onions (scallions), roughly chopped

2 large tomatoes, skinned and chopped

50-75ml (1/2 cup) dendê (unrefinded palm oil)

1 inch piece of fresh ginger, grated

Steps

• Rinse the shrimps, then soak in hot water for 20 minutes. Pour off the water and reserve the shrimps.

I get my dried shrimp from a shop specialising in Amazonian cuisine so they come whole. I discard the heads and tails, but not before I’ve mashed out their goodness for the vatapá!

• If the shrimps are still in their shells then remove the heads, tails and any thick, spiky bits. You can put all these bits in a bowl with a little boiling water; mash them with the back of a fork or a potato masher then strain, keeping the shrimpy water with the shrimps and discarding the shells.
• Blitz the peanuts, cashews, 3/4 of the shrimps and all the shrimpy water in a blender until they become a homogeneous mass, something like a dry peanut butter. If it’s not blending very well then add a good glug of the coconut milk. Put this mixture into a bowl.
• In another bowl, mix the breadcrumbs with half the remaining coconut milk.
• Blitz the parsley, spring onions, coriander, tomatoes and onion in a blender.
• Put all the remaining coconut milk in a saucepan and mix in the breadcrumb mixture, the blended herb-tomato mixture and the shrimpy-nut mixture. Use an immersion blender if necessary to get rid of any lumps (or put the whole lot in the blender for a quick blast, then return it to the pan).

It’s not essential, but I like to have some chunky bits of shrimp mixed into the vatapá.

• Gently heat the mixture in the saucepan, stirring all the time to stop it sticking. Add the palm oil, the rest of the shrimps and the grated ginger.

It doesn’t look like vatapá until you’ve stirred in the dendê.

• Check seasoning and add salt if necessary. Keep heating and stirring until it thickens to a firm, creamy consistency. If necessary, add more coconut milk to loosen it up or more breadcrumbs to thicken it. I’ve found that the vatapá can be frozen and later defrosted without any major problems.

Congratulations, you made it! Now you can construct your acarajés. Cut each acarajé open and add a generous serving of vatapá, a good dollop of hot sauce, some kind of fresh salsa (I like a mix of finely chopped tomatoes, cucumber, onion, fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves with a squeeze of lime). You should also add a couple of rehydrated dried shrimps (I’ve also tried using fresh shrimp instead and although it’s not authentic it tastes great so sue me).

I’ll leave you with a few of the different incarnations of my Acarajé do Tom: 

p.s. The new website is coming along very nicely! We’re still looking at a release date of sometime in August. More on this soon!